A national podcast was yanked from YouTube after airing an interview with a Wheatland doctor who was fired after prescribing coronavirus treatments against the recommendations of the hospital he worked for.
The incident involving Dr. Willard Woods and his interview on the podcast “Tales from the Crypt” has sparked discussions about what constitutes medical misinformation and censorship.
“It’s Orwellian,” podcast host Marty Bent told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “When you think of the number of people who could have been prevented from dying if they would have been allowed to take the medication.”
Bent said he was told by YouTube that his interview with Dr. Woods violated the company’s medical misinformation policy because it contained “claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities of the World Health Organization (WHO).
During the podcast, Dr. Woods — who declined to be interviewed by Cowboy State Daily — told Bent of prescribing hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and other medications not specifically recommended for treatment of coronavirus.
Dr. Woods described how he was fired by Platte County Memorial Hospital, owned by Banner Health, after three warnings to stop administering those medications, a practice the company called “risky.”
The doctor also questioned the safety of giving vaccines and boosters to those with strong natural immunity from the virus, saying he’s seen patients who have gotten “terribly sick” after getting the shot.
After the interview aired, Bent said YouTube pulled the podcast within 12 hours. He was also told that the interview marked the second time his podcast had violated YouTube rules and if it happened another time, it would be removed permanently.
Bent has since posted the interview on Rumble.
The banning of the video as well as the firing of Dr. Woods represents what Bent said he sees as increasing encroachments on American freedoms and alternative points of view, which in this case, he argued has cost lives.
Bent found out about Dr. Woods’ firing from one of his Wyoming friends in the cryptocurrency business. The friend had been one of Dr. Woods’ patients.
Bent reached reached out to the Dr. Woods to be interviewed on his podcast.
Bent said he was struck by what he saw as great courage and conviction on the part of the 75-year-old Wheatland OB-GYN who had been fired for continuing to prescribe medications the clinic did not recognize as safe for patients.
“You are toward the end of your career and it seems like you got screwed over pretty bad for trying to do what you thought was best for your patients in terms of treating them with the medicines that are not supposed to be named, like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and some other remedies that aren’t a jab in the arm,” Bent told Dr. Woods at the start of the podcast.
Bent described Dr. Woods as a “true warrior” dedicated to helping others in his community.
“There needs to be more men like you in today’s society,” he told Dr. Woods.
Small-Town Doctor
As the sole certified obstetrician in Wheatland, Dr. Woods has delivered the lion’s share of babies in the county. His house was 67 steps away from the hospital, where he estimated he had delivered around 3,500 babies during his 43-year career. He also took care of general surgeries.
Living in a small town afforded him the luxury of getting to know his patients, he told Bent. He ran into them at rodeos, ranch sales, and the grocery store, and sometimes, he even took the liberty of crumpling a guy’s pack of cigarettes and throwing them in the trash because he could see the adverse effects they were already having on the person.
“You can pick certain people to do that on, but you can’t do that on everyone,” Dr. Woods said.
Despite the manner in which his career ended, Dr. Woods told Bent he wouldn’t change anything for the world.
He’s loved every bit of his career and his life in Wheatland. Even as a young man he wanted to be a doctor and dreamed of living in a small town since his early days of living in Oklahoma City where he also went to medical school.
“You’re not just their doctor, you’re also their friend,” he said. “It’s a great feeling to get to watch these babies you deliver grow up and then deliver their babies for them. It’s a unique experience, and I just wouldn’t have changed anything.”
Since being fired from his position, he’s received an outpouring of support from both the community and his former patients, including hundreds of cards and phone calls.
“It was very gratifying to see that people were so gracious, but it also made me feel somewhat guilty that I’m not going to be there for them as much as I would like to be,” he said.
He hasn’t been hurt by this, Dr. Woods said, but his patients have and that’s what hurts him the most.
Navigating The Unknowns
When the pandemic first broke out, Dr. Woods – like physicians all over the world and country – scrambled to study everything he could about the disease and potential treatments.
As he searched, it became clear that Google was not the place to find medical information about COVID treatment. His wife suggested he use the search engine DuckDuckGo, where he found much more information.
Armed with the medical studies found on DuckDuckGo and elsewhere, Dr. Woods came to understand why some doctors were treating the coronavirus with anti-viral and anti-parasitic drugs.
Initial studies from France and other countries showed those medications to be quite promising for treating COVID-19.
Just when Dr. Woods was starting to feel confident about the studies he was reading about hydroxychloroquine, a common and generic drug used to treat malaria and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, a new study by Surgisphere appeared in the journals “Lancet” and the “New England Journal of Medicine” stating the drug had actually led to the deaths of nearly 30% to 45% of COVID patients in 671 hospitals worldwide.
“My God, my whole world was blown out from under me because I was thinking here we’ve got a good treatment,” Dr. Woods said. “Thank God, they discovered it was fake, and the people involved in the study were actually a pornographer and science fiction writer.”
Nonetheless, the faux study halted 40 studies on hydroxychloroquine worldwide. Within the two weeks, Dr. Woods said, the study was discounted, and researchers discovered the data had been made up.
A subsequent study by the Henry Ford Foundation showed the triple therapies of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc were effective in easing COVID’s symptoms, prompting Dr. Woods to take another look.
First Patient
Platte County was the last county in the state to get its first case, Dr. Woods said, and when the illness finally did surface in June of 2020, the patient was Dr. Woods’ daughter. There were no monoclonal antibodies available at that point, but when she recovered, her immunity was so high that she donated plasma to be used for convalescent treatment and the development of the monoclonal antibodies.
The Platte County Memorial Hospital was later allotted a limited number of monoclonal doses, so Dr. Woods turned to other medications, in addition to the monoclonal antibodies, to stretch the available supply.
He also took hydroxychloroquine himself as a preventive measure once a week, along with vitamins and zinc, and avoided catching COVID. At first, he wasn’t allowed to see patients at all due to his age and risk factors. Later, he could see patients if he signed a release and wore a hazmat suit.
Later, when data showed ivermectin was a more effective treatment alternative, Dr. Woods started taking that as well, he told Bent.
He stressed the ivermectin in question is not the same drug given to animals, which he would not recommend a human take.
Dr. Woods cited a long list of studies in the podcast backing the alternative medications as safe, including a study in India involving 350,000 health care workers who took hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure with good results.
Dr. Woods pointed to the disparity in the number of COVID-related deaths in India and the U.S., with India having significantly lower deaths, which he attributed to that country’s use of antiviral and anti-parasitic drugs both as preventive measures and as remedies administered in the early stages of the virus.
“If these drugs just lowered the death rate by 10%, and they hardly cost anything…and they’re safe and you’re only taking them for a few days, why in the world would you not do that?” Dr. Woods asked.
Other studies looked at how effective the medication was after a patient was already on a ventilator, skewing the results, Dr. Woods said.
He cited more than 40 other studies that showed the drugs had favorable results within the proper dosages.
Dr. Woods also explained that the drugs worked against the virus and added it is important that the disease be treated within three to five days of diagnosis before the virus invades the lung tissue.
Yet, in the United States, these drugs were not authorized for treatment for COVID by the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC) and Federal Drug Administration.
Dr. Woods told Bent he could not understand why these medicines were not used early in the illness.
“And for ERs to test someone that sick and they test positive for COVID and say, ‘We can’t do anything for you,’” he said. “Other than take Tylenol, go home, isolate yourself for whatever number of days they decide on, and then just come back if you get real sick and real short of breath and not even offer them vitamins, not even talk about monitoring their oxygen level with an oximeter.”
Firing
In the end, Dr. Woods was fired after three warnings to not prescribe the drugs, which were deemed dangerous by the hospital. Primarily, he said, the hospital leaders thought there was a risk of his using hydroxychloroquine.
“They called my behavior risky,” he said.
When questioned, Dr. Woods said he attempted to provide studies and data backing his choice of medications, but his arguments ultimately fell on deaf ears.
Such reactions are what Bent described as “crimes against humanity” in the way the pandemic was handled to the detriment of people.
“One of the most disgusting things about this whole debacle was the way it seems to have been politicized by the corporate media, politicians and whoever it may be that had a special interest in big pharma,” Bent said, “to the extent that it divided the country.”
Both Bent and Dr. Woods see irreparable harm in the ways scientific debate was essentially squashed during the pandemic.
Bent said he wondered how many people would still be alive if they had access to the medications prescribed by Dr. Woods.
“We are in the fight of our lives in terms of being able to live free in the digital age,” Bent said. “World War III is here. It’s just not the hot war people are used to. It’s a psychological war.”
As for Dr. Woods, he said he appreciated the support of his community.
“The people of Platte County don’t think I’m crazy,” he said. “I don’t espouse to any conspiracy theories. Really, I’m here today to tell you that I’ve treated about 500 people and none of them have died. They’ve all done well. And I can tell you this: it works.”
